Tagged With computex 2016

Given that Computex is basically a haven for PC tech and enthusiasts, it goes without saying that there are a ton of insane PC mods. I've already shown you the fairy floss mod that MSI was showing off at their booth, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Using your fingerprint to verify your identity is not only more secure than a password, there's also no complex string of characters for you to forget or repeatedly mistype. But if you're also determined to use your ancient laptop until the day it dies, Synaptics' will soon have an easy and unobtrusive way to upgrade it with another layer of security.

Video: Over the last few years, there's been a trend in technology press conferences and product announcements to try and make them more human, cool, and connected to real people and reality -- to give these hunks of plastic and silicon some more life and presence. Sometimes, they're a little bit lame. Everyone is guilty of it -- Samsung, Google, Samsung, or maybe Microsoft, or Blackberry, or Samsung. Now, it's Asus's turn.

It doesn't look particularly exciting: after all, it's just an innocuous box. But it's something that could soon become ubiquitous for delivery drivers, courier companies and transportation fleets -- and insurance companies are going to love it.

MSI loves a good gaming laptop -- it's the brains behind the phenomenally powerful GT80 Titan, among others. That trend continues at Computex 2016, but MSI has also thrown its considerable weight behind small-form-factor gaming PCs too, all of which are VR ready.

So while I don't typically have any issues with virtual reality, one demo at Computex this year left me heavily, heavily nauseous. But that's OK. Maybe it's a once-off; maybe the calibration was bad. Maybe something else was to blame. It hasn't soured me on VR one iota.

During Intel's keynote for Computex 2016, the chip manufacturer showcased a multiplayer VR experience called Raw Data. The game was playable at Intel's booth for the annual tech show, so naturally I had a go.

What I didn't expect to get was a nausea and queasiness that lasted for hours. What I expected even less was the fact that I enjoyed the game so much that I'd give it another go.

I'd been sitting down for about fifteen minutes listening to a presentation. It was the first morning of Computex proper, and it was about the Internet of Things and the power of The Internet of Things. Intel was telling attendees about the power of IoT devices, with small low-power chips, that can change the way we do everyday things.

I'm a hardcore gamer, and so it's not a topic that I get naturally excited about. But then the presentation ended and we were given the chance to talk to some of the inventors, entrepreneurs and students trying to create real world solutions. And then I saw a pouch.

Partner manufacturers Gigabyte and Aorus both make laptops, but they approach things differently. This year at Computex, though, both are going for broke with super-thin gaming machines designed to catch the eye but still perform at maximum power.

As one last thing at its Computex 2016 press conference, after introducing the Radeon RX 480 graphics card, AMD wanted to remind the world that its next-generation Zen CPU core isn't that far away. And we've now seen a desktop Zen chip for the first time, held by AMD boss Lisa Su -- the same chip that will be competing with Intel's top processors in the months to come.

At its Computex 2016 press conference, AMD has taken the wraps off its brand new Radeon RX 480 graphics card: a brand new 14-nanometre chip designed for 2016 and 2017's most demanding games and virtual reality graphics. It's a card designed to compete with Nvidia's mid-range GTX 1070 and previous-generation GTX 970/980, but at a fraction of the price. AMD says its new cards will be out by the end of June at a price of $US199.

At 12PM today, AMD will share its response to Nvidia's new GeForce graphics cards, and its response to Intel's new CPUs. We'll see the official launch of AMD's new seventh-generation A-Series APUs, and the company's brand new Polaris graphics architecture.

Not content to stay out of the limelight at this year's Computex trade show, Dell has shown off an entirely refreshed line-up of Inspiron laptops. 11-, 13-, 15- and 17-inch models all include 2-in-1 360-degree convertible hinges, and bright colours are definitely the trend that we're seeing.

Deep learning, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality. They were already some of the biggest themes of this year's Computex, and during their keynote conference Intel continued to hammer home the importance of all three.

But perhaps the biggest element of the chip manufacturer's keynote was the battlegrounds they outlined for the future, battlegrounds that further highlight the company's transition away from just being a PC company.

To kick off the first day of Computex, Intel held a "Meet the Makers" event showing off some prototypes and proof of concepts showing some of the ways their chips are being used in devices that could one day improve society.

Today is the opening day of Computex 2016, and to mark the occasion Intel has a brand new processor family. Designed for the hardest of hardcore enthusiasts, Intel's new 14-nanometre Broadwell-E chips, the Core i7-69XX and i7-68XX, are its most powerful ever. Forget your garden-variety quad-cores and dual-cores; the Intel Core i7-6950X is an entirely unlocked, overclocking-friendly 10-core monster with support for quad-channel RAM and four graphics cards. If you can't afford the circa-$2200 price tag for the newest top-end silicon, though, new 8- and 6-core CPUs are also on the way.

You can't have Computex without NVIDIA, and the annual tech conference wouldn't be the same without a conference or two from the GPU giant. But while Pascal and the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 are drawing a lot of headlines right now, what's really intriguing is the world with which NVIDIA has inextricably tied its future to.